The letter is still there. Isn’t it all I expected in the past few months? It seems too heavy for me to read. Deep breath, go for a walk and pray. I know I’m improving. It used to take me three days to open the decision letter. Now I simply linger a bit.
We all experience that anxiety, unless you don’t care. I was not aware when I overcome that feeling. One day, I discussed with a student where to submit a paper which has been rejected by a journal. He naturally went for a lower impact journal. Then I found that several papers of mine were rejected by less impact journals in the beginning. I took the reviewers’ comments to refine the arguments and think from a different perspective. The papers eventually appeared in top journals. Reviewers have taught me so much tacit knowledge about research that the university would not afford. They are my advisors. They sharpen me up my writing of theoretical papers.
I’ve seen researchers remaining in the fear of facing reviewers’ comments and gradually loosing chances of publication. This is particularly hard for researchers in social sciences and humanities. Very often the authors sense being attacked by a different school of thought. Set your mind on learning, rather than preaching your work, may secure you against the fear.